Sunday, 5 May 2013

When
we were children our father often worked on the night-shift. Once it
was spring-time, and he used to arrive home, black and tired, just as
we were downstairs in our night-dresses. Then night met morning face
to face, and the contact was not always happy. Perhaps it was painful
to my father to see us gaily entering upon the day into which he
dragged himself soiled and weary. He didn't like going to bed in the
spring morning sunshine.

But sometimes he was happy,
because of his long walk through the dewy fields in the first daybreak.
He loved the open morning, the crystal and the space, after a night
down pit. He watched every bird, every stir in the trembling grass,
answered the whinneying of the pee-wits and tweeted to the wrens. If
he could, he also would have whinnied and tweeted and whistled, in a
native language that was not human. He liked non-human things best.

One sunny morning we were all sitting at table when we heard his
heavy slurring walk up the entry. We became uneasy. His was always a
disturbing presence, trammeling. He passed the window darkly, and we
heard him go into the scullery and put down his tin bottle. But
directly he came into the kitchen. We felt at once that he had
something to communicate. No one spoke. We watched his black face for
a second.

"Give me a drink," he said.

My mother hastily poured out his tea. He went to pour it out into the
saucer. But instead of drinking, he suddenly put something on the
table, among the tea-cups. A tiny brown rabbit! A small rabbit, a
mere morsel, sitting against the bread as still as if it were a made
thing.

"A rabbit! A young one! Who gave it you, father?"

But he laughed enigmatically, with a sliding motion of his
yellow-grey eyes, and went to take off his coat. We pounced on the
rabbit.

"Is it alive? Can you feel its heart beat?"

My father came back and sat down heavily in his arm-chair. He
dragged his saucer to him, and blew his tea, pushing out his red lips
under his black moustache.

"Where did you get it, father?"

"I picked it up," he said, wiping his naked forearm over his mouth and beard.

"Where?"

"Is it a wild one?" came my mother's quick voice.

"Yes, it is."

"Then why did you bring it?" cried my mother.

"Oh, we wanted it," came our cry.

"Yes, I've no doubt you did -- " retorted my mother. But she was drowned in our clamour of questions.

On the field path, my father had found a dead mother rabbit and
three dead little ones -- this one alive, but unmoving.

"But what had killed them, Daddy?"

"I couldn't say, my child. I s'd think she'd eaten something."

"Why did you bring it!" again my mother's voice of condemnation. "You know what it will be."

My father made no answer, but we were loud in protest.

"He must bring it. It's not big enough to live by itself. It would die," we shouted.

"Yes, and it will die now. And then there'll be another outcry."

My mother set her face against the tragedy of dead pets. Our hearts sank.

"It won't die, father, will it? Why will it? It won't."

"I s'd think not," said my father.

"You know well enough it will. Haven't we had it all before -- !" said my mother.

"They dunna always pine," replied my father testily.

But my mother reminded him of other little wild animals he had
brought, which had sulked and refused to live, and brought storms of
tears and trouble in our house of lunatics.

Trouble fell
on us. The little rabbit sat on our lap, unmoving, its eye wide and
dark. We brought it milk, warm milk, and held it to its nose. It sat
as still as if it was far away, retreated down some deep burrow,
hidden, oblivious. We wetted its mouth and whiskers with drops of
milk. It gave no sign, did not even shake off the wet white drops.
Somebody began to shed a few secret tears.

"What did I say?" cried my mother. "Take it and put it down the field."

Her command was in vain. We were driven to get dressed for
school. There sat the rabbit. It was like a tiny obscure cloud.
Watching it, the emotions died out of our breast. Useless to love it,
to yearn over it. Its little feelings were all ambushed. They must be
circumvented. Love and affection were a trespass upon it. A little
wild thing, it became more mute and asphyxiated still in its own
arrest, when we approached with love. We must not love it. We must
circumvent it, for its own existence.

So I passed the
order to my sister and my mother. The rabbit was not to be spoken to,
nor even looked at. Wrapping it in a piece of flannel, I put it in an
obscure corner of the cold parlour, and put a saucer of milk before its
nose. My mother was forbidden to enter the parlour whilst we were at
school.

"As if I should take any notice of your
nonsense," she cried, affronted. Yet I doubt if she ventured into that
parlour.

At midday, after school, creeping into the
front room, there we saw the rabbit still and unmoving in the piece of
flannel. Strange grey-brown neutralization of life, still living! It
was a sore problem to us.

"Why won't it drink its milk, mother?" we whispered. Our father was asleep.

"It prefers to sulk its life away, silly little thing." A
profound problem. Prefers to sulk its life away! We put young
dandelion leaves to its nose. The sphinx was not more oblivious.

At tea-time, however, it had hopped a few inches, out of its
flannel, and there it sat again, uncovered, a little solid cloud of
muteness, brown, with unmoving whiskers. Only its side palpitated
slightly with life.

Darkness came, my father set off to
work. The rabbit was still unmoving. Dumb despair was coming over the
sisters, a threat of tears before bedtime. Clouds of my mother's
anger gathered, as she muttered against my father's wantonness.

Once more the rabbit was wrapped in the old pit-singlet. But now
it was carried into the scullery and put under the copper fire- place,
that it might think itself inside a burrow. The saucers were placed
about, four or five, here and there on the floor, so that if the little
creature should chance to hop abroad, it could not fail to come upon
some food. After this my mother was allowed to take from the
scullery what she wanted and then she was forbidden to open the door.

When morning came, and it was light, I went downstairs. Opening
the scullery door I heard a slight scuffle. Then I saw dabbles of milk
all over the floor and tiny rabbit-droppings in the saucers. And
there the miscreant, the tips of his ears showing behind a pair of
boots. I peeped at him. He sat bright-eyed and askance, twitching his
nose and looking at me while not looking at me.

He was alive -- very much alive. But still we were afraid to trespass much on his confidence.

"Father!" My father was arrested at the door. "Father, the rabbit's alive."

"Back your life it is," said my father.

"Mind how you go in."

By evening, however, the little creature was tame, quite tame. He
was christened Adolf. We were enchanted by him. We couldn't really
love him, because he was wild and loveless to the end. But he was an
unmixed delight.

We decided he was too small to live in a
hutch -- he must live at large in the house. My mother protested, but
in vain. He was so tiny. So we had him upstairs, and he dropped his
tiny pills on the bed and we were enchanted.

Adolf made
himself instantly at home. He had the run of the house, and was
perfectly happy, with his tunnels and his holes behind the furniture.

We loved him to take meals with us. He would sit on the table
humping his back, sipping his milk, shaking his whiskers and his tender
ears, hopping off and hobbling back to his saucer, with an air of
supreme unconcern. Suddenly he was alert. He hobbled a few tiny
paces, and reared himself up inquisitively at the sugar-basin. He
fluttered his tiny fore-paws, and then reached and laid them on the
edge of the basin, whilst he craned his thin neck and peeped in. He
trembled his whiskers at the sugar, then did his best to lift down a
lump.

"Do you think I will have it! Animals in the sugar pot!" cried my mother, with a rap of her hand on the table.

Which so delighted the electric Adolf that he flung his hind- quarters and knocked over a cup.

"It's your own fault, mother. If you left him alone -- "

He continued to take tea with us. He rather liked warm tea. And
he loved sugar. Having nibbled a lump, he would turn to the butter.
There he was shooed off by our parent. He soon learned to treat her
shooing with indifference. Still, she hated him to put his nose in the
food. And he loved to do it. And so one day between them they
overturned the cream-jug. Adolf deluged his little chest, bounced back
in terror, was seized by his little ears by my mother and bounced down
on the hearth-rug. There he shivered in momentary discomfort, and
suddenly set off in a wild flight to the parlour.

This
last was his happy hunting ground. He had cultivated the bad habit of
pensively nibbling certain bits of cloth in the hearth-rug. When
chased from this pasture, he would retreat under the sofa. There he
would twinkle in Buddhist meditation until suddenly, no one knew why,
he would go off like an alarum clock. With a sudden bumping scuffle he
would whirl out of the room, going through the doorway with his little
ears flying. Then we would hear his thunder-bolt hurtling in the
parlour, but before we could follow, the wild streak of Adolf would
flash past us, on an electric wind that swept him round the scullery
and carried him back, a little mad thing, flying possessed like a ball
round the parlour. After which ebullition he would sit in a corner
composed and distant, twitching his whiskers in abstract meditation.
And it was in vain we questioned him about his outbursts. He just went
off like a gun, and was as calm after it as a gun that smokes
placidly.

Alas, he grew up rapidly. It was almost impossible to keep him from the outer door.

One day, as we were playing by the stile, I saw his brown shadow
loiter across the road and pass into the field that faced the houses.
Instantly a cry of "Adolf!" a cry he knew full well. And instantly a
wind swept him away down the sloping meadow, his tail twinkling and
zig-zagging through the grass. After him we pelted. It was a strange
sight to see him, ears back, his little loins so powerful, flinging the
world behind him. We ran ourselves out of breath, but could not catch
him. Then somebody headed him off, and he sat with sudden unconcern,
twitching his nose under a bunch of nettles.

His wanderings cost him a shock. One Sunday morning my father had just been quarreling with a pedlar, and we were hearing
the aftermath indoors, when there came a sudden unearthly scream from
the yard. We flew out. There sat Adolf cowering under a bench, whilst
a great black and white cat glowered intently at him, a few yards
away. Sight not to be forgotten. Adolf rolling back his eyes and
parting his strange muzzle in another scream, the cat stretching
forward in a slow elongation.

Ha, how we hated that
cat! How we pursued him over the chapel well and across the
neighbours' gardens. Adolf was still only half grown.

But Adolf was becoming too much for her. He dropped too many
pills. And suddenly to hear him clumping downstairs when she was alone
in the house was startling. And to keep him from the door was
impossible. Cats prowled outside. It was worse than having a child to
look after.

Yet we would not have him shut up. He
became more lusty, more callous than ever. He was a strong kicker, and
many a scratch on face and arms did we owe to him. But he brought his
own doom on himself. The lace curtains in the parlour -- my mother
was rather proud of them -- fell on to the floor very full. One of
Adolf's joys was to scuffle wildly through them as though through some
foamy undergrowth. He had already torn rents in them.

One day he entangled himself altogether. He kicked, he whirled round
in a mad nebulous inferno. He screamed -- and brought down the
curtain-rod with a smash, right on the best beloved pelargonium, just
as my mother rushed in. She extricated him, but she never forgave him.
And he never forgave either. A heartless wildness had come over him.

Even we understood that he must go. It was decided;
after a long deliberation, that my father should carry him back to the
wild-woods. Once again he was stowed into the great pocket of the
pit-jacket.

"Best pop him i' th' pot," said my father, who enjoyed raising the wind of indignation.

And so, next day, our father said that Adolf, set down on the edge
of the coppice, had hopped away with utmost indifference, neither
elated nor moved. We heard it and believed. But many, many were the heart searchings...

D. H. Lawrence: Adolf (excerpt), from The Dial, September 1920

this post for Angelica

6 comments:

This animal story based on Lawrence's childhood memories was composed in 1919, in response to a request from his friend John Middleton Murry, editor of the Atheneum, for "uncontroversial" articles. The story was rejected by Murry, but then, with the help of another literary friend, Richard Aldington, in 1920 it was published in the Dial; it was, however, left out Lawrence's short story collections during his lifetime.

Regrettably so, because, like all Lawrence's writings about animals, "Adolf" is remarkably closely observed from nature.

Another good example of the presence of this gift of inter-species in-feeling:

Such a sweet post for Angelica, yes. I really like the lines where the child says Useless to love it, to yearn over it. Love and affection were a trespass upon it. Or was that the mum, rather? She knew how it would end. Maybe it is 'useless' to grow love and affection for something we know will not be here forever?

What a brilliant tale this is. Sensitivity, sympathy... and above all, recollection (Steve) of observation -- the acute edge of a writer's gift.

WB's spot-on, Dürer's and Lawrence's rabbits -- so real... And Samuel Palmer seems to have understood the wildness of the coppice.

(Perhaps not so much the Brangwens as the Morels, in this reconstructed family picture?)

"a tiny obscure cloud" -- oh yes!

And here I think Marie comes to the gist:

"...where the child says Useless to love it, to yearn over it. Love and affection were a trespass upon it. Or was that the mum, rather? She knew how it would end. Maybe it is 'useless' to grow love and affection for something we know will not be here forever?"

These relationships with wild or stray animals that begin in curiosity and pity and grow through affection into attachment can become so complicated, for humans are prone to sorts of attachment that wild creatures are not. And it is not love that sequesters and confines.

Over the years we've known a few people who adopted rabbits as more-or-less pets... usually "less", in the end, for a rabbit is a lot to handle.

A half century ago in Bolinas, when that tiny village was still a curious haven of wild and half-wild creatures, we had friends who dwelt in an old falling-down house across from the rickety downtown market, and they kept a rabbit in the house. The wildness of the rabbit certainly contributed the most vivid wildness in a household of semi-clothed small children who ran about happily as naked savages and adults who wore more clothing but were scarcely less orderly. It all seemed to wok itself out somehow, and the rabbit set the tone.

Around the turn of this latest century we had friends here who were Brazilian postdoc scientists. The particularly congenial fellow who had first befriended us lived in rental digs, and with the rental house he had inherited a family of rabbits. They had a sort of hutch, contained within a small fenced garden. They spent much of their time in the hutch, but were allowed their freedom of the garden, so the arrangement was probably as close to ideal as a rabbit-human space-sharing arrangement can be. Wonderful creatures these were, to observe as a guest. Caring for them however -- another matter altogether.

Angelica, who is a great reader of Lawrence, was particularly drawn to this tale for a personal reason. We currently have a cat friend, a large very intelligent and barely manageable male Siamese, whose loveably untoward conduct is such that some of Lawrence's sentences might as well apply to him as to Adolf.

In particular, sentences like:

"He sat bright-eyed and askance, twitching his nose and looking at me while not looking at me...

"...and suddenly set off in a wild flight to the parlour.

"...he would go off like an alarum clock. With a sudden bumping scuffle he would whirl out of the room, going through the doorway with his little ears flying. Then we would hear his thunder-bolt hurtling in the parlour, but before we could follow, the wild streak of Adolf would flash past us, on an electric wind that swept him round the scullery and carried him back, a little mad thing, flying possessed like a ball round the parlour..."